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Shayna goes to Paris after her sister is found dead. While visiting her sisters apartment to pack up her belongings, she reads a message in their secret twin language that she is really alive so she decides to retrace the steps of her sisters last days to try and find her. She trusts no one and tells no one that her sister is really alive. Why is her sister hiding? Who tried to kill her?

Overall, this story was hard for me to get through. It was underdeveloped and the mystery was short lived. The ending was predictable and it was slow to get there. There is little to no build up for the suspense; I was continuously bored and just wanted to just flip to the last few pages because everything in between was so pointless. The whole thing was just a poor quality mystery/suspense novel. Meanwhile, the entire prose was absolutely ridiculous.

The main character, Shayna, is a pre-med student who is described as very intelligent in the beginning. Her character doesn’t seem to maintain this intellectual trait throughout the mystery though.

I kept reading hoping there might be a major surprise and revelation towards or in the end but there wasn’t. It was under 300 pages though, so I suffered through.

The Missing Sister is Elle Marr’s debut novel. Visit her website here.

Read Publisher Weekly’s review for The Missing Sister.

The Missing Sister was selected as one of PopSugar’s 31 new thriller and mystery books to look out for in 2020.

Follow Elle Marr on Facebook or Twitter.

|Purchase on Amazon|Goodreads Review|

A tight-nit family along with a few friends go on their annual trip to a secluded cabin that has been passed down for generations. Along the way, they swerve to miss hitting a deer. This instant changes their lives forever and their camper falls below the guardrails on the side of a mountain into the snow. Finn, a sixteen year old, is immediately dead, but does not pass through to her next world. She continues to watch her family through survival, rescue, guilt, and grief.

The chapters are short and there are a total of 94 chapters. The first 14% (ch.1-5) of the story were the days leading up to their trip before the accident occurs. When the accident hit, it really picked up. I couldn’t read fast enough. There is a huge “omg” moment that happens while they are fighting for survival. I was astounded, angry, and my jaw dropped when this happened.

At 38 % the rescue takes place but not all survive. (Meaning only 14-38% or ch. 6-35 of the novel was their survival story, the rest is what happens after they get back home.) From this point on the family is drowning in blame, grief, and hate. Guilt radiates the life and relationships of those who survived and a secret is kept about that fateful night. This is the bulk and focus of the story; so for most of the story it is not very happy.

Paranormal aspect- The narrator is dead and narrates all of the story for the family/characters. She watches them while lingering in limbo. (They cannot see her, but she talks to them in their dreams.) Towards the end this narration style got repetitive.

There is some minor mundane stuff that happens like watching baseball games, rescuing kittens…to help them with their grief. There is cussing and sex, but not the sexy details. Overall, I enjoyed it though I would definitely classify this as a young adult novel.

The ending Author’s Note is a must read which explains the real story that inspired this fictional novel.